Dennis Prager – WNDhttp://www.wnd.com
A Free Press For A Free People Since 1997Thu, 24 May 2018 17:43:59 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6Why the left won't call anyone 'animals'http://www.wnd.com/2018/05/why-the-left-wont-call-anyone-animals/
http://www.wnd.com/2018/05/why-the-left-wont-call-anyone-animals/#respondTue, 22 May 2018 03:43:44 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=4674123If you want to understand the moral sickness at the heart of leftism, read the first paragraph of the most recent column by Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne:

“It’s never right to call other human beings ‘animals.’ It’s not something we should even have to debate. No matter how debased the behavior of a given individual or group, no matter how much legitimate anger that genuinely evil actions might inspire, dehumanizing others always leads us down a dangerous path.”

Let’s begin with the first sentence: “It’s never right to call other human beings ‘animals.'”

This is so self-evident to Dionne that he adds, “It’s not something we should even have to debate.”

Only someone who has never debated the issue could make such a claim.

So allow me to debate the assertion.

My view is the antithesis of Dionne’s. As I see it, it is not right to never call another human being an “animal.”

Calling the cruelest among us names such as “animal” or any other “dehumanizing” epithet actually protects humans. The word “beastly” exists for a reason and is frequently applied to human beings. By rhetorically reading certain despicable people out of the human race, we elevate the human race. We have declared certain behaviors out of line with being human.

Biologically, of course, we are all human. But if “human” is to mean anything moral – anything beyond the purely biological – then some people who have committed particularly heinous acts of evil against other human beings are not to be considered human. Otherwise “human” has no moral being. We should then not retain the word “inhumane.” What is the difference between “he is inhumane” and “he is an animal”? Both imply actions that render the person no longer human.

Dionne provides his answer at the end of the paragraph: “dehumanizing others always leads us down a dangerous path.”

He provides not a single argument or illustration for this truly absurd comment.

Anyone who refuses to “dehumanize” the Nazi physicians – who, with no anesthesia, froze naked people for hours and then dropped them in boiling water to rewarm them; put people in depressurized rooms where their eardrums burst, driving them out of their minds from pain; rubbed wood shavings and ground glass into infected wounds, etc. – is, to put it very gently, profoundly morally confused.

What would Dionne have us call those Nazi physicians – “not nice,” “badly flawed,” “evil”? Why is rhetorically ostracizing them from the human race “a dangerous path”? He doesn’t have an answer because he lives in the left’s world of moral-sounding platitudes. Leftism consists almost entirely of moral-sounding platitudes – statements meant to make the person making them feel morally sophisticated. But based on their relative reactions to the sadists of the MS-13 gangs, I trust Donald Trump’s moral compass more than E.J. Dionne’s.

It is ever dangerous to use dehumanizing rhetoric on people? Of course – when it is directed at people based on their race, religion, ethnicity, nationality or any other immutable physical characteristic. The Nazis did what they did to Jews and others because they dehumanized them based on their religious/ethnic/racial identity. That’s why racism is evil. But why is it dangerous to use such rhetoric on people based on their behavior? By equating labeling the cruelest among us “animals” with labeling Jews “animals,” Dionne cheapens the fight against real evil.

I once asked Rabbi Leon Radzik, a Holocaust survivor who had been in Auschwitz, what word he would use to characterize the sadistic guards in the camp. I will never forget his response: “They were monsters with a human face.”

Incredibly, Dionne would not agree with him.

]]>http://www.wnd.com/2018/05/why-the-left-wont-call-anyone-animals/feed/0Cornell student presents senior thesis in her underwearhttp://www.wnd.com/2018/05/cornell-student-presents-senior-thesis-in-her-underwear/
http://www.wnd.com/2018/05/cornell-student-presents-senior-thesis-in-her-underwear/#respondTue, 15 May 2018 23:58:26 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=4672767The most remarkable thing about the title of this column is that not one reader will think it’s a joke. That, my friends, is further proof of the low esteem in which most Americans hold our universities.

The left has rendered our universities, in the description of Harvard professor Steven Pinker, laughingstocks.

As reported in The Cornell Daily Sun and then around the world, this is what actually happened last week at Cornell University, one of our “Ivy League” universities: Senior Letitia Chai presented a trial run of her scholar senior thesis wearing a blue, button-down shirt and cutoff jean shorts. Her professor, Rebekah Maggor, asked her, “Is that really what you would wear?”

The professor went on to say that Chai’s shorts were “too short” – that, as a speaker, she was making a “statement” with her clothes. As reported in the newspaper, “The class does not have a formalized dress code, but asks students to ‘dress appropriately for the persona (they) will present.'”

Offended and hurt by the professor’s suggestion, Chai decided that she would present her thesis in even less clothing. She appeared before her fellow students in her shirt and shorts and then removed them. As she stripped down to a bra and panties, she explained: “I am more than Asian. I am more than a woman. I am more than Letitia Chai. I am a human being, and I ask you to take this leap of faith, to take this next step – or rather, this next strip – in our movement and to join me in revealing to each other and to seeing each other for who we truly are: members of the human race. … We are so triumphant, but most importantly, we are equals.”

Twenty-eight of the 44 audience members followed suit, stripping down.

Chai’s presentation was livestreamed. It can still be seen on Facebook.

Eleven students who were present wrote a long statement defending both the professor – who apologized profusely – and Chai. It read: “As students who firmly believe in the tenants” – that Cornell students do not know the word is “tenets,” not “tenants,” is not surprising – “of justice and the commitment to fair representation, we feel that it is our duty to make the following statement. We support Letitia’s commitment to the cause of women’s rights. … We strongly support and identify with Letitia’s fight for equality in the treatment of all people, regardless of race, gender, color, creed, sexuality, or appearance. The majority of us are students of color, from multiethnic backgrounds, who very much relate to Letitia’s frustration with systemic oppression that is part of the fabric of this country. … Our recollection of that day is as follows:

“Letitia stood up to give her speech. Before she began, our professor asked Letitia if she would wear ‘those shorts’ to her actual presentation on Saturday. Our professor regularly asks all of the students, male and female, such questions to clarify appropriate attire for public speaking. Our professor went on to say that what you wear and how you present yourself make a statement. She noted that if you were to wear jean shorts to your thesis presentation, that is a statement. Her focus on attire was a means of noting the importance of professionalism in certain public speaking situations. … Throughout the semester … We have also had several meaningful dialogues on privilege, discussed how to avoid (white) savior narratives. … Our professor … often illustrates the ways to us in which society can institute a socialized behavior (for females, acting apologetic for opinions) due to systematic oppression.”

It’s hard to know which aspect of this story is the most ludicrous and the most disturbing. Is it the students stripping down to their underwear? That delivering a senior thesis in one’s underwear before fellow students, most of whom also stripped down, is acceptable – even honored – at Cornell University tells you just about all you need to know to understand the degraded state of Cornell and most other American universities. And if delivering a senior thesis in one’s underwear is a blow for women’s equality, why wear underwear? Why not deliver the thesis naked?

Is it the pervasive assumption of America’s “systemic oppression” of women and ethnic minorities? If there are luckier young women in the world than those who attend Cornell and other American universities, it is hard to imagine who they might be. Yet they have been so effectively indoctrinated by their left-wing instructors in elementary school, high school and college they walk around thinking of themselves as victims of “systemic oppression” in what is probably the freest and most opportunity-giving society in human history.

Or is it the apparent absence of any criticism of Chai by even one of the 1,650 faculty members of Cornell University? It is inconceivable that even at Cornell, there is not one faculty member who found this young woman’s behavior an insult to Cornell and the once-exalted field of higher education. Yet they so fear their left-wing colleagues and left-wing students that they have said nothing.

This story reconfirms what I regularly tell parents: Sending your child to college is playing Russian roulette with their values.

]]>http://www.wnd.com/2018/05/cornell-student-presents-senior-thesis-in-her-underwear/feed/0The left's war on wisdomhttp://www.wnd.com/2018/05/the-lefts-war-on-wisdom/
http://www.wnd.com/2018/05/the-lefts-war-on-wisdom/#respondMon, 07 May 2018 23:07:39 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=4671130There is more knowledge available today than ever before in history. But few would argue people are wiser than ever before.

On the contrary, many of us would argue that we are living in a particularly foolish time – a period that is largely wisdom-free, especially among those with the most knowledge: the best-educated.

The fact that one of our two major political parties is advocating lowering the voting age to 16 is a good example of the absence of wisdom among a large segment of the adult population. What adult deems 16-year-olds capable of making a wise voting decision? The answer is an adult with the wisdom of a 16-year-old – “Hey, I’m no wiser than most 16-year-olds. Why should I have the vote and they not?”

America has been influenced and is now being largely led by members of the baby-boom generation. This is the generation that came up with the motto “Never trust anyone over 30,” making it the first American generation to proclaim contempt for wisdom as a virtue.

The left in America is founded on the rejection of wisdom. It is possible to be on the left and be kind, honest in business, faithful to one’s spouse, etc. But it is not possible to be wise if one subscribes to leftist (as opposed to liberal) ideas.

Last year, Amy Wax, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, co-authored an opinion piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer with a professor from the University of San Diego School of Law in which they wrote that the “bourgeois culture” and “bourgeois norms” that governed America from the end of World War II until the mid-1960s were good for America, and that their rejection has caused much of the social dysfunction that has characterized this country since the 1960s.

Those values included, in their words: “Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.”

Recognizing those norms as universally beneficial constitutes wisdom. Rejection of them constitutes a rejection of wisdom – i.e., foolishness.

Yet the left almost universally rejected the Wax piece, deeming it, as the left-wing National Lawyers Guild wrote, “an explicit and implicit endorsement of white supremacy,” and questioning whether professor Wax should be allowed to continue teaching a required first-year course at Penn Law.

To equate getting married before having children, working hard and eschewing substance abuse and crime with “white supremacy” is to betray an absence of wisdom that is as depressing as it breathtaking. It is obvious to anyone with a modicum of common sense that those values benefit anyone who adheres to them; they have nothing to do with race.

But almost every left-wing position (that differs from a liberal or conservative position) is bereft of wisdom.

Is the left-wing belief in the notion of “cultural appropriation” – such as the left’s recent condemnation of a white girl for wearing a Chinese dress to her high school prom – wise? Or is it simply moronic?

Is the left-wing belief that there are more than two genders wise? Or is it objectively false, foolish and nihilistic?

Has the left-wing belief that children need (unearned) self-esteem turned out to be wise, or morally and psychologically destructive? To its credit, last year, the Guardian wrote a scathing exposé on the “lie” – its word – the self-esteem movement is based on and the narcissistic generation it created.

Is it wise to provide college students with “safe spaces” – with their hot chocolate, stuffed animals and puppy videos – in which to hide whenever a conservative speaker comes to their college? Or is it just ridiculous and infantilizing?

Is the left’s rejection of many, if not most, great philosophical, literary and artistic works of wisdom on the grounds that they were written or created by white males wise? One example: The English department of the University of Pennsylvania, half of whose law school professors condemned Amy Wax and almost none of whose law professors defended her piece, removed a portrait of William Shakespeare (replacing it with that of a black lesbian poet).

Is multiculturalism, the idea that no culture is superior to another morally or in any other way wise? Isn’t it the antithesis of wisdom, whose very premise is that certain ideas are morally superior to others, and certain literary or artistic works are superior to others?

And the veneration of feelings over truth, not to mention wisdom, is a cornerstone of leftism.

Here’s one way to test my thesis: Ask left-wing friends what they have done to pass on wisdom to their children. Most will answer with a question: “What do you mean?” Then ask religious Jewish or Christian friends the same question. They won’t answer with a question.

]]>http://www.wnd.com/2018/05/the-lefts-war-on-wisdom/feed/0Fear of the left: The most powerful force in America todayhttp://www.wnd.com/2018/04/fear-of-the-left-the-most-powerful-force-in-america-today/
http://www.wnd.com/2018/04/fear-of-the-left-the-most-powerful-force-in-america-today/#respondTue, 01 May 2018 03:50:16 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=4669620The dominant force in America and many other Western countries today is fear of the left.

This is a result of the fact that the most dynamic religion of the past 100 years has been neither Christianity nor Islam. It has been leftism. Whoever does not recognize this does not understand the contemporary world.

Leftism – in its incarnations, such as Marxism, communism and socialism; expressed through egalitarianism, environmentalism and feminism; in its denigration of capitalism and Western civilization, especially America and Israel; in its supplanting of Christianity and Judaism; through its influence on Christianity and Judaism; in its celebration of race; and in its replacing of reason with romanticism – has almost completely taken over the news and entertainment media and institutions of education.

There is a largely (though not entirely) nonviolent reign of ideological terror in America. In almost every area of life, people fear antagonizing the left.

Last week, before my speech at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a man employed by the university (I will not say in what department) walked over to me, looked around to see whether anyone was watching and whispered in my ear, “I’m a conservative.”

This happens just about everywhere I speak. People whisper – yes, whisper – that they are conservative or they support Trump. The last time I experienced people looking around to check whether they were seen speaking to me was with dissidents in the Soviet Union.

People call my radio show from all over the country to say that their fellow musicians, nurses, teachers or employees do not know that they are conservative, let alone that they support the president.

I have called contemporary conservatives in America Marranos, the name given during the 15th-century Spanish Inquisition to Jews who hid their Judaism while appearing to be Catholics, lest they be persecuted. I do not compare the consequences: Losing one’s friends or employment is not the same as losing one’s home or one’s life. But otherwise, the label is apt.

Because of my widely covered conducting of the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra at the Walt Disney Concert Hall last summer, members of some of the most prestigious orchestras in America have opened up to me, telling me they are conservative but would never reveal this fact to their fellow musicians. They fear either losing their position or, more likely, being socially ostracized.

Why are so many Democrats shocked when a Republican is elected president? Because, as they themselves say, they “don’t know anyone” who voted for the Republican. The primary reason for this is the people in their life who voted for Donald Trump – professional colleagues, and even friends and relatives – are afraid to tell them.

There are two reasons the left labels most conservatives and all Trump supporters “white supremacists,” “neo-Nazis” and “racists.” One is to defeat conservatives without having to defeat conservative ideas. The other is to instill fear: Speak out and you will suffer the consequences.

Parents call my radio show and ask what they should tell their children at college when they ask whether they should risk receiving a lower grade for divulging their conservative politics in a paper or on an exam.

It is becoming more and more common for leftist mobs to gather in front of a conservative’s home, scream epithets at the conservative’s family members and vandalize the home. Just last week, the Associated Press reported: “Protesters are targeting the northern Virginia home of the National Rifle Association’s top lobbyist … Chris Cox … as well as his wife’s nearby decorating business. … Libby Locke, a lawyer for the Cox family, said the vandalism included spraying fake blood and defacing the home with stickers.”

Left-wing student mobs routinely take over the offices of university deans, professors and even presidents. The few non-left-wing professors on any campus understand their lives will be made miserable if they speak out. The widely reported case of liberal biology professor Bret Weinstein at Evergreen State College in Washington is directly on point.

In May 2017, professor Weinstein was surrounded by about 50 left-wing students, who screamed curses at him outside of his classroom for refusing to participate in an event during which white people were asked to leave the campus for a day.

On May 24, 2017, Weinstein tweeted: “The police told me I am not safe on campus. They can not protect me.”

Within a few months, left-wing students and the left-wing Evergreen administration made life so miserable for the lifelong liberal professor he left the university.

Since the left began spreading the lie that a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, shot a black youth because he, like most police officers, is a racist, police officers in many cities have feared taking proactive measures to prevent violent crime in black neighborhoods. They fear the left-wing mob known as the news media will ruin their reputation and end their career.

In the recent case of a Philadelphia Starbucks manager who asked two black men to purchase something before giving them the code to the restroom, Starbucks immediately appeased the left-wing mob. The company didn’t wait until any facts came out; it simply abandoned the manager and announced it would close every U.S. store one day in May to educate all Starbucks employees about “unconscious bias.”

These are only a few examples of the left-wing intimidation that dominates much of American life.

It does so in large measure because liberals are either too afraid to confront the left or they don’t understand that the American left, not the American right, is the mortal enemy of liberalism.

]]>http://www.wnd.com/2018/04/fear-of-the-left-the-most-powerful-force-in-america-today/feed/0N.Y. Times responds -- and calls me a hypocritehttp://www.wnd.com/2018/04/n-y-times-responds-and-calls-me-a-hypocrite/
http://www.wnd.com/2018/04/n-y-times-responds-and-calls-me-a-hypocrite/#respondTue, 24 Apr 2018 03:19:38 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=4668112In my last column – “The New York Times Best-Seller List: Another Reason Americans Don’t Trust the Media” – I used my recently published book as evidence that the New York Times best-seller list is not a best-seller list.

I pointed out that the book, “The Rational Bible: Exodus,” the first volume of my commentary on the first five books of the Bible (the Torah), did not appear on the New York Times best-seller list even though it was:

– No. 2 on the Wall Street Journal nonfiction best-seller list.

– No. 2 on the Publishers Weekly nonfiction best-seller list.

– No. 2 in hardcover nonfiction on Nielsen BookScan, which tracks 75 to 85 percent of book sales. According to BookScan, the book outsold 14 of the 15 books on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction list.

– No. 1 on Ingram, the largest book wholesaler in the country.

And, as of this writing, “The Rational Bible” fluctuates between the top 10 and top 40 of all books – on all subjects – on Amazon.

There are, therefore, only two possibilities: All other indicators of book sales in America including all objective ones (Ingram and BookScan) are wrong, or the New York Times best-seller list is wrong.

Apparently, such evidence and other arguments I offered were strong enough to compel the New York Times to defend itself in a series of tweets from NYTimes Communications. The liberal internet site Mediate headlined its story on the tweets “NY Times PR Roasts Conservative Author Dennis Prager For ‘Hypocrisy’ in Rare and Stunning Tweetstorm.”

But the Times’ “rare and stunning” response only strengthened any honest observer’s conviction that its best-seller list isn’t a best-seller list – that due to ideological reasons, simple incompetence or both, it is actually the least accurate major best-seller list in the country.

The Times tweeted, “Political views held and expressed by authors have no bearing on our rankings.”

Few conservatives in the book industry believe that. For example, Regnery Publishing, the publisher of my book, announced a year ago the Times list is so ideologically biased Regnery would no longer announce whether any of its authors are New York Times best-selling authors. And even fewer in the religious community believe it: Does the New York Times regularly include sales data from Christian bookstores, for example?

Of course, in order to assume the New York Times is unbiased when it comes to conservative and religious books, one has to assume the Times is unbiased when reporting on other conservative and religious matters. And it isn’t.

But even if one does believe the Times has no ideological agenda, its best-seller list is still the most inaccurate of all major best-seller lists. That’s why none of the Times’ tweets contradicted anything I wrote. Instead the Times did what progressive institutions and individuals routinely do when differed with: attacked the individual.

“Hypocrisy alert,” the Times tweet warned. “@DennisPrager wrote a dishonest essay about our best-sellers lists. He claims, ‘I have long known it isn’t a best-seller list, and I don’t pay attention to it.’ Though he lists ‘NYT best-selling author’ on his twitter bio and his own site.”

Actually, I did write that a previous book of mine was on the Times list. And I don’t pay attention to the list unless I have just published a book. Moreover, why does listing that I am a New York Times best-selling author render me a hypocrite? Like every author, I write books in the hope that many people will read them, and I know listing “New York Times best-selling author” helps sell books.

Anyway, what connection is there between my alleged hypocrisy and whether the New York Times best-seller list is legitimate? The answer, of course, is there isn’t one. What the Times did is what the left usually does to those with whom it differs and cannot effectively respond to – slapped on a morally defective label. It’s so common a practice I long ago gave it an acronym: SIXHIRB, Sexist, Intolerant, Xenophobic, Homophobic, Islamophobic, Racist, Bigoted. “Hypocrite” fits right in.

Most importantly, the Times tweets label my column as “dishonest” and declare that it “has no basis in fact and includes a number of factual inaccuracies.”

Yet the Times provided but one – dubious – example of an inaccuracy: It said it doesn’t have Jordan Peterson’s No. 1 best-selling nonfiction book anywhere on its list because the book is published in Canada. Apparently, a book published by Random House Canada doesn’t qualify as an American-published book (even though the Random House Canada parent company, Random House, is an American publisher). But doesn’t that only reconfirm that the New York Times best-seller list is not actually a best-seller list? The others list the book.

The reason the Times doesn’t offer any other example of inaccuracy in what I wrote is that it can’t. Instead it offers this statement: “Rankings on different organization’s best-seller lists vary for a variety of reasons. Other organizations rely on book sales from different reporting stores and reporting periods.”

In other words, the Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, USA Today, Ingram and BookScan are all wrong. Only the New York Times best-seller list is right.

I am sure most of its readers believe that. But most of the country doesn’t. And so long as the Times refuses to open up about how it arrives at its unique numbers, no one should believe it.

]]>http://www.wnd.com/2018/04/n-y-times-responds-and-calls-me-a-hypocrite/feed/0Another reason Americans don't trust the mediahttp://www.wnd.com/2018/04/another-reason-americans-dont-trust-the-media/
http://www.wnd.com/2018/04/another-reason-americans-dont-trust-the-media/#respondTue, 17 Apr 2018 03:53:01 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=4666572About half the American people do not believe the mainstream media tell the truth. They believe the media are more interested in promoting their left-wing views than reporting the truth.

I am, I note with sadness, a member of that half.

Here is but one more example: The New York Times bestseller list.

As a writer (who, for the record, had a previous book on that list), I have long known it isn’t a bestseller list, and I don’t pay attention to it. But I paid attention last week to see if my recently published book, which opened up on Amazon as the second-bestselling book in America, was on the list. It wasn’t.

The book, “The Rational Bible: Exodus,” the first volume of a five-volume commentary on the first five books of the Bible (the Torah), was No. 2 in nonfiction on The Wall Street Journal bestseller list; No. 2 on the Publishers Weekly nonfiction bestseller list; No. 1 on Ingram, the largest book wholesaler in the country; and, according to Nielson BookScan, the organization that tracks 75 to 85 percent of book sales, No. 2 in hardcover nonfiction. In fact, according to Bookscan, it outsold 14 of the 15 books on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list. But again, it is not even listed on the New York Times bestseller list.

I was told years ago that the Times bestseller list almost never includes overtly religious books. I believe it but cannot prove it. I was told the Times doesn’t even monitor Christian bookstore sales (though many Christians have bought my commentary, few of its sales thus far have been through Christian bookstores).

At least as suggestive of bias is that the No. 1 hardcover nonfiction book on the Wall Street Journal and Publishers Weekly lists, “12 Rules for Life” by Jordan B. Peterson, is also not listed on the New York Times bestseller list.

Is it a coincidence that Peterson is a conservative and I am a conservative and my book is a Bible commentary?

In order to think it is mere coincidence, you have to believe the New York Times more than reality itself, which about half the country seems to. While the Times occasionally lists conservative books and, very rarely, religious books, after comparing the list and the BookScan list, the Observer concluded in 2016: “If you happen to work for the New York Times and have a book out, your book is more likely to stay on the list longer and have a higher-ranking than books not written by New York Times employees. … If you happen to have written a conservative-political-leaning book, you’re more likely to be ranked lower and drop off the list faster than those books with a more liberal political slant.”

In other words, the New York Times bestseller list is not a bestseller list – which even the New York Times once acknowledged. In the early 1980s, William Peter Blatty, author of the monumental bestseller “The Exorcist,” sued the New York Times for only listing his novel on the list one time, even though it sold in the millions. In defending itself before the court, as reported by Book History, the annual journal of The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (Penn State University Press), the Times said, “The list did not purport to be an objective compilation of information but instead was an editorial product.”

Yet when asked last year about the announcement by Regnery Publishing (my book publisher) that it was no longer referencing the New York Times in any author publicity, New York Times spokesman Jordan Cohen told the Associated Press: “Our goal is that the lists reflect authentic bestsellers. The political views of authors have no bearing on our rankings, and the notion that we would manipulate the lists to exclude books for political reasons is simply ludicrous.”

According to the New York Times, it is “simply ludicrous” to question why a conservative book and a religious book, which are the No. 1 and No. 2 books, respectively, on every bestseller list other than that of the New York Times, do not even appear on the Times list.

Here’s a different view: What is “simply ludicrous” is wondering why the “fake news” charge against mainstream American media resonates with half the American people.

]]>http://www.wnd.com/2018/04/another-reason-americans-dont-trust-the-media/feed/0Whatever the left touches it ruinshttp://www.wnd.com/2018/04/whatever-the-left-touches-it-ruins/
http://www.wnd.com/2018/04/whatever-the-left-touches-it-ruins/#respondTue, 10 Apr 2018 03:31:13 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=4665132The only way to save Western civilization is to convince more people that leftism – not liberalism – is a nihilistic force. Quite literally, whatever the left touches it ruins.

So, here is a partial listing of the damage done by the left and the Democratic Party:

The most obvious – and, therefore, the one more and Americans can resonate with – is the near destruction of most American universities as places of learning. In the words of Harvard professor Steven Pinker – an atheist and a liberal – outside of the natural sciences and a few other disciplines (such as mathematics and business), “universities are becoming laughing stocks of intolerance.”

If you send your children to a university, you are endangering both their mind and their character. There is a real chance they will be more intolerant and more foolish after college than they were when they entered college.

When you attend an American university, you are taught to have contempt for America and its founders, to prefer socialism to capitalism, to divide human beings by race and ethnicity. You are taught to shut down those who differ with you, to not debate them. And you are taught to place feelings over reason – which is a guaranteed route to eventual evil.

The left has ruined most of the arts. The following three examples are chosen because they are scatological, a favorite form of left-wing artistic expression. Before the left poisoned the arts, art was intended to elevate the viewer (or listener). But to the left, “elevate” is a meaningless term; it is far more at home depicting urine, fecal matter and menstrual blood.

In 2011, a lifelike German sculpture depicting a policewoman squatting and urinating – even the puddle is sculpted – received an award from a prestigious German foundation, the Leinemann Foundation for Fine Art.

In 2013, the Orange County Museum of Art in California placed a huge 28-foot sculpture of a dog outside the museum, where it periodically urinates a yellow fluid onto a museum wall.

In 2016, one of the most prestigious art museums in the world, the Guggenheim in New York, featured a pure-gold working toilet bowl, which visitors were invited to use. The name of the exhibit was “America” – so one could literally relieve oneself on America.

Thanks to the left, the Philadelphia Orchestra, one of the greatest orchestras in the world, allowed itself to become of a voice of leftist hate last week. It featured the premiere of Philadelphia Voices, “a political rant put to musical garbage,” as some musically knowledgeable Philadelphians described it to me. In the fifth movement, titled “My House Is Full of Black People,” the black teen narrator chants the following lines: “The county is full of black people/ All wanting to be heard/ While old white men draw lines on maps/ To shut all of them up.” Later in the movement, he yells, “If you would all just f–-ing listen!”

Uplifting, no?

On the left, that’s considered art.

And, of course, such politicization of the arts is accepted as the norm.

Indeed, that’s part of the left’s poisoning of everything – its politicization of everything.

The left is increasingly poisoning sports. In most football stadiums this past season, one could not attend an NFL game without being subjected to left-wing contempt for America and its flag.

So, too, one cannot watch late-night television if one desires to simply be entertained before drifting off to sleep. Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and other hosts have changed late-night TV into left-night TV. Why merely be funny when you can use your monologues to advance your left-wing views?

The left has poisoned mainstream religion. Mainstream Protestantism, non-Orthodox Judaism and much of the Catholic Church – including and especially Pope Francis – are essentially left-wing advocacy groups with religious symbols.

The left is destroying the unique American commitment to free speech. Almost half of incoming college freshmen do not believe in free speech for what they deem “hate speech” (merely taking issue with a left-wing position is, in the left’s view, “hate speech”). They do not understand that the whole point of free speech is allowing the expression of opposing ideas, including what we consider “hate speech.”

The left has poisoned race relations. America is the least racist multiracial society in the world. On a daily basis, Americans of every race and ethnicity get along superbly. But the black left and the white left constantly poison young minds with hate-filled diatribes against whites, “white privilege,” “systemic racism,” black dorms, black graduations, lies about the events in Ferguson, Missouri, and the like.

The left has made innumerable women unhappy, even depressed, with its decades of lying about how female sexual nature and male sexual nature are identical – leading to a “hookup” culture that leaves vast numbers of young women depressed – and its indoctrinating of generations of young women into believing they will be happier through career success than marital success.

And, in some ways scariest of all, the left is poisoning our children with its commitment to ending male and female as distinct categories. One of the great joys of life, celebrating one’s sex, is now deemed nothing more than a hateful idea in many of your children’s schools.

For these and other reasons, if you treasure American and Western civilization, fighting the left – something all liberals and conservatives need to do – is the greatest good you can engage in at this time.

]]>http://www.wnd.com/2018/04/whatever-the-left-touches-it-ruins/feed/05 questions for secular conservativeshttp://www.wnd.com/2018/04/5-questions-for-secular-conservatives/
http://www.wnd.com/2018/04/5-questions-for-secular-conservatives/#respondTue, 03 Apr 2018 03:12:38 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=4663661Many years ago, I attended a dinner at a wealthy man’s New York City condo with, among others, one of the most prominent and influential conservatives in American life. I admired this man then and I admire him now (he has since passed on). He was a major force for good in America.

At one point, the subjects of God and religion came up, and I mentioned how essential God is to morality – that without God, morality is subjective, a matter of personal or communal opinion. Having debated atheist scholars, all of whom agreed with this not-very-audacious observation, I was quite surprised when this prominent conservative took strong issue with me: God is morally unnecessary, he stated with some passion – why would any educated person think otherwise?

This was my first confrontation – I was a young man at the time – with the unsettling realization that to be a conservative did not necessarily mean being religious. Until that time, I had naively assumed that it did.

I thought so for three reasons:

First, all the religious – God-based, Bible-based, religiously active – people I knew or studied were conservative. I grew up an Orthodox Jew in the yeshiva world, home to some liberals, many conservatives and no leftists.

Second, in American terms, the American conservative I most admired, William F. Buckley Jr., the founder and publisher of National Review, was a deeply religious Catholic.

Third, America was founded on religious – specifically Judeo-Christian – principles. Wouldn’t a conservative seek to conserve all of America’s basic principles?

It is a testament to the power of our secular education – primary school through university – that it has successfully secularized students from conservative homes almost as well as students from liberal and left-wing homes. Most well-educated conservatives have embraced secular values and made peace with a secular and godless America just as much as have well-educated leftists.

One has to wonder what secular conservatives do with statements such as this famous one of John Adams: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

And what do they do when they read George Washington’s Farewell Address, in which he said, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports”?

I think the answer is they do what liberal and left-wing secularists do: either ignore these statements or regard them as a quaint aspect of the founders’ thinking.

Here are some questions for secular conservatives:

Do you think America will be able to prosper – or even survive – as the nation you love if the American people abandon God and religion?

Do you think the West will be able to do so?

What do you believe will give future generations of Americans meaning in the way religion has until now?

With regard to God and religion, how do you differ from left-wing secularists?

What book(s) do you believe ought to replace the Bible as providers of wisdom to the American people?

Yesterday, my book “The Rational Bible,” a 500-page commentary on the book of Exodus, was published. It is probably the biggest surprise of my life that, as of this writing, it ranks No. 2 on Amazon. Not No. 2 among religious books; No. 2 among all books sold in America. If there was one book I have written that I never entertained hopes of becoming a best-seller, this was it.

I think the primary explanation is a yearning among many Americans – particularly conservatives, and particularly young people – for meaning and wisdom, neither of which their godless upbringing and education provided. Even if it was conservative.

]]>http://www.wnd.com/2018/04/5-questions-for-secular-conservatives/feed/0It doesn't matter if a president is adulteroushttp://www.wnd.com/2018/03/it-doesnt-matter-if-a-president-is-adulterous/
http://www.wnd.com/2018/03/it-doesnt-matter-if-a-president-is-adulterous/#respondTue, 27 Mar 2018 03:41:36 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=4662106Some years ago, I wrote a column about adultery and politicians. In light of the Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal interviews concerning their alleged (and probable) affairs with President Donald Trump, it is time to revisit the subject.

I do not agree with those – right or left, religious or secular – who contend that adultery invalidates a political or social leader. It may invalidate a pastor, priest or rabbi – because a major part of their vocation is to be a moral/religious model, and because clergy do not make war, sign national budgets, appoint judges, run foreign policy or serve as commanders in chief. In other words, unlike your clergyman or clergywoman, almost everything a president does as president affects hundreds of millions of Americans and billions of non-Americans. If a president is also a moral model, that is a wonderful bonus. But that is not part of a president’s job description.

But even anti-Trump conservatives still assert character matters a great deal in a president and other political leaders.

There are two problems with that argument.

The most obvious is that adultery is frequently an inaccurate measure of a person’s character. Indeed, many otherwise great men have been unfaithful to their spouse. And while it is always a sin – the Sixth Commandment doesn’t come with an asterisk – there are gradations of sin.

Let me give an example of when adultery would be a lower-grade sin: when it is committed by men or women who have taken care of their Alzheimer’s-afflicted spouse for many years and the afflicted spouse no longer even recognizes them. Of course, the healthy spouse could find love with someone else without committing adultery – by divorcing their demented spouse. But few people would be so heartless as to recommend that avenue. At the other end of the sin spectrum would be flaunting one’s adultery, thereby publicly humiliating one’s spouse.

The second problem with the adultery-matters-in-a-political-leader argument is that the policies of a political leader matter much more – morally – than that individual’s sexual sins, or even character. It is truly foolish to argue otherwise. Would we rather have as president a person with racist views who otherwise had an exemplary personal character or a believer in racial equality who committed adultery?

I have considerably more moral contempt for the media’s and the left’s obsession with Stormy Daniels than I do for Donald Trump for his alleged night of sinful sex with her. That “60 Minutes” correspondent Anderson Cooper and many in our country found it acceptable to ask a woman, “Did he use a condom?” on national TV is a far graver reflection of America’s moral malaise than a man having a one-night affair 12 years ago.

It should be clear that this whole preoccupation with Trump’s past sex life has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with humiliating Trump – and, thereby, hopefully weakening the Trump presidency – the raison d’etre of the media since he was elected. Here’s one proof: The media rightly celebrate, as we all do, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as one of the moral greats of the 20th century despite reports of his having committed adultery on numerous occasions.

Likewise, the media and the left idolized Sen. Ted Kennedy, regularly referring to him as the “Lion of the Senate.” Yet Kennedy was notorious for his lechery – far more so than Trump. Typical Ted Kennedy behavior, as described in New York Magazine, was when he and then-fellow Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd “participated in the famous ‘waitress sandwich’ at La Brasserie in 1985, while their dates were in the bathroom.”

John F. Kennedy remains the most revered of Democratic presidents in the modern era. Yet we now know he routinely had affairs in the White House in his wife’s absence and had the Secret Service provide him advance notice of her return.

And, by the way, if sexual infidelity invalidates the character and, therefore, the worthiness of a politician, why doesn’t it invalidate the character and worthiness of an editor at the New York Times or the Washington Post? Why aren’t their sex lives investigated? They have, after all, more influence than almost any politician.

So, dear anti-Trump conservatives, please tone down the moral horror at Donald Trump’s character, and the suggestions that it overshadows the good he has done and continues to do for America and the world.

The fact is it is none of my business and none of my concern whether a politician ever had an extramarital affair. To cite just one of many examples, a president’s attitude toward the genocide-advocating Islamic tyrants in Tehran is incomparably more morally significant. That is just one of many reasons – on moral grounds alone – I far prefer the current president to the faithful-to-his-wife previous president.

]]>http://www.wnd.com/2018/03/it-doesnt-matter-if-a-president-is-adulterous/feed/0Thoughts on parents whose children have diedhttp://www.wnd.com/2018/03/thoughts-on-parents-whose-children-have-died/
http://www.wnd.com/2018/03/thoughts-on-parents-whose-children-have-died/#respondMon, 19 Mar 2018 23:20:11 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=4660348In decades of writing columns, I have taken risks but perhaps never one as big this: writing a column to and about parents who have lost a child. I can well imagine that the first reaction of any parent who has lost a child will be: Why does this guy, who hasn’t gone through what I have, think he has something to say about the death of a child? What does he know about the unspeakable pain I live with?

Nevertheless, having talked to many parents who have lost children over the course of 40 years – on my radio show and in private consultations (largely because of my religious writings and talks) – and given the possibility that I might be able to say something that will help some parents, I feel it is a risk worth taking.

So, here are some thoughts in light of the latest massacre of students.

1. Most deaths of young people are what we normally label “senseless.” When an old person dies, no one deems the death senseless. When a policeman, fireman or soldier dies, we don’t label their deaths senseless. But when most young people die, it is obviously not because of old age, and it is relatively rarely a result of them having risked their lives for society. Rather, it is usually an accident – a car crash, a drunk driver, a drug overdose, a disease, a murder. All of those are indeed senseless, which adds to a parent’s already immeasurable pain. The parent whose child died fighting the Taliban at least has some consolation.

2. As a believer in a just and good God, I am thoroughly convinced that parents will indeed meet their child again. As I explain in a PragerU video on the afterlife, while the existence of an afterlife is not provable, it is axiomatic that if there is a good God, there is an afterlife. A good God would not make this life – with all its unjust suffering – the only realm of existence. Moreover, there is a large body of convincing evidence for the existence of an afterlife.

3. Happiness is usually a choice, even for parents who have lost a child. Abraham Lincoln, who had a very difficult life – including the death of two of his sons, a psychologically troubled wife and the management of a horrific civil war – famously said, “Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”

Parents who have lost a child must still try to choose to be happy, or at least allow themselves moments of happiness. As much as this seems impossible within a year or two or five of a child’s death (a close friend who lost his 11-year-old son told me he “wept at least once a day for five years; after that, it quite abruptly seemed to get better”), and even though the hole left by a child’s death is never filled, happiness is possible – if the parents give themselves permission to experience it.

If you do not, it is not only your child who has died but you as well. And if your child was murdered, the murderer has claimed yet another victim.

4. People who have lost a child find some comfort in myriad ways. For some it is through their other children – if they have any – their marriage or their religion; having a community or a life of service; immersion in a passion, friends or therapy; or some combination of these things. But I would be remiss if I did not relate what the father of a 21-year-old who died in a car accident told me. He said that nothing lessened his intense pain over losing his beloved son – not one of the aforementioned ways, for example – until he discovered support groups for parents who lost a child. Because they were the only ones who could empathize with his pain, he found listening and talking to them truly therapeutic. Two organizations that might help are The Compassionate Friends and the Forever Family Foundation

5. There is something that can be almost as painful as losing a child: losing a child who has not died. This is rarely addressed, yet I am convinced the phenomenon of adult children who have chosen to never speak to their parent has reached epidemic proportions. Whenever I raise this subject on my radio show, men (and, less frequently, women) call in and weep when they tell me that their child has not spoken to them in 10, 20 or more years. It is frequently, though certainly not always, the result of parental alienation brought about by an angry ex-spouse during and after a divorce.

It is true there is always hope that the child will return to the parent. But after a decade or two, and after the parents having been deprived of knowing their grandchildren, often there is no realistic hope. Their pain is permanent, and they do not have the loving memories that most parents whose child has died have.

6. Finally, don’t blame God. God didn’t kill your child. If anything, He grieves along with you. No one, whether a parent or anyone else, should stop believing in God because of such terrible incidents. God made a world in which people die at all ages and in many ways, a world in which people are free to do evil. The alternative would be a world consisting of human-like robots who could never commit evil. But such a world would be meaningless and as devoid of joy as it is suffering. If you want to get angry at God, definitely do so. But that is not the same as not believing in Him.